Outdoor Lighting for Pedestrians: A Guide for Safe and Walkable Places

Outdoor Lighting for Pedestrians shows how outdoor lighting is important for pedestrians’ safety, personal security, and comfort, with major impacts on street, path, and park aesthetics and neighborhood sense of place. Providing clear, basic technical background (accessible to non-engineers), the book focuses especially on planning and policy concerns. It covers the fundamentals of lighting technology; benefits, costs, and possible adverse impacts of lighting enhancements; traditional and innovative approaches; planning and policy documents and practices; aesthetics and placemaking; and technology trends in lighting design. This book is aimed primarily at practicing transportation planners and engineers, generalist urban planners, safety advocates and researchers, and university students. However, lighting designers and other professionals will also find it useful. It considers how lighting can be coordinated with other potential improvements to enhance the pedestrian environment for better walkability.

Frank Markowitz is a highly experienced transportation planner and pedestrian safety specialist. His career has been split between public agencies and consulting firms. From 2000 to 2018, he managed pedestrian safety and other planning programs for the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA). There he co-led a major federally funded research project evaluating innovative pedestrian safety measures, along with the University of California at Berkeley. His SFMTA projects included consideration of street lighting conditions and improvement concepts, as well as transportation planning and engineering review for large land development projects, several encompassing entire new mixed-use neighborhoods.

Frank initiated and presented two webinars that served as the basis for this book, for the University of North Carolina’s Pedestrian & Bicycle Information Center and the Association of Pedestrian & Bicycle Professionals. He was an appointed member of the Transportation Research Board (TRB) Pedestrian Committee and the San Mateo County Bicycle & Pedestrian Advisory Committee. He led two national technical committees of the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE). He also prepared over 25 conference presentations, papers, and articles for organizations such as ITE, TRB, the Urban Land Institute, and the American Planning Association. Early in his career, he worked as a research associate for a behavioral sciences research institute and a data analyst for a metropolitan county public health agency. He holds master’s degrees in urban planning and health science.